Mid-Season Madness

The BEA Mentorship Program is in its third year! We are stoked to see Lexi Ducheane (Archbishop Murphy, class of 2019) paired up with Edmonds-Woodway High School and University of Puget Sound alumnae as she continues to check off boxes on her goals! Two weeks ago, the freshman recorded some of her best performances so far at the high school varsity level: against Granite Falls, where she started for the first time, Lexi scored 16 points, dished out 10 assists, and snatched 8 steals! Three days later against Cedarcrest, Lexi recorded 11 points, 5 assists, and 7 rebounds. Way to go!

We are also excited to see our mentees performing well all over the Puget Sound this season: Melina Monlux is one of the leading scorers at Ballard High School; Ella and Lily DiPietro continue to lead Bishop Blanchet to an 18-1 record under a new coach, suffering only a loss to top-ranked West Seattle; Lily Gustafson’s Shorewood revitalized Shorewood squad has pulled off upsets against Glacier Peak and Edmonds-Woodway; and at Edmonds-Woodway, Mady Burdett, nominated at the beginning of the season for All-USA Washington State Player of the Week, continues to put up double-digits, while Missy Peterson has recorded almost a triple double in many of her performances this season. Good luck to all in the final weeks of the season, and onto playoffs!

Lexi working out with Coach Harter on a Sunday!

Calling For Submissions: the Awesome Sports Project

About two months ago, we launched the Awesome Sports Project, an online journal committed to inspiring girls and women’s voices in sports! We have loved working on stories about playing pick-up games with boys (by Melina Monlux), running barefoot through the streets of Lisbon (by Elizabeth Riggio), and fighting against a body that keeps breaking down (by Erin McCartney Rozniakowski), among so many others. We are also very excited and humbled by the work of our editorial interns, as they reflected on writings about women’s sports and sat down with women leaders: GM at a fitness studio and the captain of the Seattle Majestic, Melissa Castor (by Allie Morrison), and former sports journalistAmy Bergstrom (by Lily Gustafson). We are also very grateful to photographer Tara Brown, whose work on our first photo series, “Who I Am: A Girl and An Athlete” helped our student-athletes express their identities as girls and athletes. Beyond any of our expectations, the first week of launch drew over 1,000 views; this week, with the publication of Kellie Koester’s “Women as Play-Makers”, we have pushed past 3,000 views from the Brazil and Germany and Singapore to Australia and New Zealand and Israel!

JOIN US in this conversation! We are looking not only for girl and women athletes to tell their stories, but for dads and mothers and coaches to speak up, for men who love women’s soccer to scream as loudly as they do when Lebron James throws down another dunk. Write about the time when you lost a game 107-9 and got your first college recruiting letter. Tell us about that moment when your team broke a press, raced down the court, and scored a lay-up. Tell us where you were in 1999 when Brandi Chastain stripped off her uniform, or in 2015 when Carli Lloyd scored a goal from half-field in the World Cup Finals. Tell us about your sport. The heart-breaking-ness of it. Its awesome beauty. Submissions are open.

We are very excited by the positive feedback about our “Shake Off Your Rust” Boot Camp this September, the Awesome Jam, and the Pre-Season Boot Camp! We will continue to bring more and more women back to our community to teach our girls about our chosen sport! A quick shout out to Megan Mattison for winning the free-throw competition and to Lexi Ducheane for championing the three-point competition! Both of them received gift bags worth more than $100, with donations from Every Blessed Day, the Seattle Storm and Nube 9. Thank you to Positive Performance for sponsoring the event as well. Join us next fall!